Well, May was certainly an active month, though not as successful as March and April. Here’s how I did.

May 2018 Report Card

Submissions Sent: 14

Rejections: 12

Acceptances: 1

Publications: 0

Other: 1

Fourteen submissions in May. That’s solid, and I’ve got sixty for the year. The acceptance gives me six total for 2018, which puts me at an even ten percent acceptance rate. Not bad, but I’d like to get somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen percent by the end of the year. I’ve got a few stories shortlisted I’m waiting to hear about, but those could go either way.

Rejections

I won’t lie; twelve rejections is kind of a lot, but it’s to be expected with the increased submission volume. Here’s how those rejections broke down.

Standard Form Rejections: 6

Upper-Tier Form Rejections: 5

Personal Rejections: 1

Again, a fair amount of “good” rejections, but some of these stories just aren’t landing despite some encouraging notes. I’m gonna take a good hard look at them and see if I can’t put my finger on what might be missing. There’s really nothing new and exciting in these rejections, so instead of showing you yet another form rejection, I think an examination of how long these markets are taking to respond would be more useful.

Rejection

Date Sent

Date Received

Days Out

Rejection 1

28-Feb-18

1-May-18

62

Rejection 2

26-Mar-18

1-May-18

36

Rejection 3

3-May-18

5-May-18

2

Rejection 4

1-May-18

9-May-18

8

Rejection 5

29-Mar-18

11-May-18

43

Rejection 6

6-May-18

13-May-18

7

Rejection 7

5-May-18

20-May-18

15

Rejection 8

11-May-18

21-May-18

10

Rejection 9

14-May-18

21-May-18

7

Rejection 10

30-Apr-18

22-May-18

22

Rejection 11

22-May-18

23-May-18

1

Rejection 12

23-May-18

24-May-18

1

Not too bad. The longest wait was 60 days, and that’s well within acceptable parameters. As you can see, there’s a fair number of single digit responses here, and that’s not uncommon for a lot of pro markets.

Other

The “other” this month was a withdrawal letter. I sent this withdrawal for what is, by far, the most common reason I’ve sent them in the last few years. The market went under and is now defunct. I sent this letter more as a professional courtesy than anything else.

Dear Editors,

I would like to withdraw my stories [story title] and [story title] from consideration at [publisher].

Thank you for your time.

Best,

Aeryn Rudel

Did I have to send this letter? Maybe not. The market basically disappeared, and this email bounced back with an “address not found” note. That said, I don’t know what happened on the other end of those submissions, and closing down a publication is obviously not something anyone wants to do. So it’s important to me to stay professional, wish the publisher well, and move on.

Acceptances

One acceptance this month, which broke a minor rejection streak I had going.

Acceptance: Sent 5/22/2018; Accepted 5/25/2018

Thank you for taking the time to submit your story [story title]. I’d be delighted to publish it on [publisher].

I’ve scheduled it for publication on 29 June, if this date changes I will let you know.

Thanks again for submitting your work.

This is my second publication with this particular market. The interesting thing here is that this is a form letter. Yep, form letters aren’t just for rejections. That said, you’ll often get a personal note after the initial form acceptance with requests for things like bios and author photos and/or info about the contract.

Congratulations on that acceptance and thank you for keeping us updated with your progress. I started doing this ‘100 Rejections’ challenge last year but finally came around to sharing my progress with my readers in May. I only sent out one story because I procrastinated (for n number of reasons) but mainly because I was taking it year by year and not month by month and for some reason thought I’ll catch up by the end of the year. Though now I realize it doesn’t really work that way. I’m hoping to do better this month onwards.